Glenday, John. “Ferienhaus Kaapes, Holsthum.”
Transnational Literature. Vol. 13, Oct 2021
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Easter 2017
All night the closed flame of the tulips burned in the garden,
constant as that little field of candles in the Schankweiler Klause,
lit for whomsoever. We woke to the scent of woodsmoke
and frosted apple blossom. Later those three boys – three brothers –
rattling at the door: the dead come hurrying back
to remind us we will never be forgotten. And every bell
in every church tolling its particular silence; calling us to God,
to life, to love, as in the end the silence always will.
John Glenday is the author of four collections. The most recent, The Golden Mean, won the 2015 Roehampton Poetry Prize. His Selected Poems was published by Picador in 2020 and in the same year a pamphlet about landscape and belonging, The Firth, appeared with Mariscat Press.